Using Paraphrase Metrics for Answering Questions

ABSTRACT

A mechanism is provided in a data processing system for using paraphrase metrics for answering questions. The mechanism receives an input question and generating a candidate answer from a corpus of information. The candidate answer has a supporting passage from the corpus of information. The mechanism divides the input question into a first sequence of tokens and divides the supporting passage into a second sequence of tokens. The mechanism identifies a plurality of subsequences of tokens within the second sequence of tokens and applies a paraphrase metric to compare the first sequence of tokens to each of the plurality of subsequences of tokens to generate a plurality of paraphrase metric scores. The mechanism then determines a confidence score for the candidate answer based on a highest paraphrase metric score within the plurality of paraphrase metric scores.

BACKGROUND

The present application relates generally to an improved data processingapparatus and method and more specifically to mechanisms for usingparaphrase metrics for answering questions.

With the increased usage of computing networks, such as the Internet,humans are currently inundated and overwhelmed with the amount ofinformation available to them from various structured and unstructuredsources. However, information gaps abound as users try to piece togetherwhat they can find that they believe to be relevant during searches forinformation on various subjects. To assist with such searches, recentresearch has been directed to generating Question and Answer (QA)systems which may take an input question, analyze it, and return resultsindicative of the most probable answer to the input question. QA systemsprovide automated mechanisms for searching through large sets of sourcesof content, e.g., electronic documents, and analyze them with regard toan input question to determine an answer to the question and aconfidence measure as to how accurate an answer is for answering theinput question.

IBM Watson™ is an application. of advanced natural language processing,information retrieval, knowledge representation and reasoning, andmachine learning technologies to the field of open domain questionanswering. IBM Watson™ is built for answering questions using hypothesisgeneration, massive evidence gathering, analysis, and scoring.Generally, IBM Watson™ takes an input question, analyzes it, decomposesthe question into constituent parts, generates one or more hypothesisbased on the decomposed question and results of a primary search ofanswer sources, performs hypothesis and evidence scoring based on aretrieval of evidence from evidence sources, performs synthesis of theone or more hypothesis, and based on trained models, performs a finalmerging and ranking to output an answer to the input question along witha confidence measure.

SUMMARY

In one illustrative embodiment, a method, in a data processing system,is provided for using paraphrase metrics for answering questions. Themethod comprises receiving an input question and generating a candidateanswer from a corpus of information. The candidate answer has asupporting passage from the corpus of information. The method furthercomprises dividing the input question into a first sequence of tokensand dividing the supporting passage into a second sequence of tokens.The method further comprises identifying a plurality of subsequences oftokens within the second sequence of tokens and applying a paraphrasemetric to compare the first sequence of tokens to each of the pluralityof subsequences of tokens to generate a plurality of paraphrase metricscores. The method further comprises determining a confidence score forthe candidate answer based on a highest paraphrase metric score withinthe plurality of paraphrase metric scores.

In other illustrative embodiments, a computer program product comprisinga computer useable or readable medium having a computer readable programis provided. The computer readable program, when executed on a computingdevice, causes the computing device to perform various ones of, andcombinations of, the operations outlined above with regard to the methodillustrative embodiment.

In yet another illustrative embodiment, a system/apparatus is provided.The system/apparatus may comprise one or more processors and a memorycoupled to the one or more processors. The memory may compriseinstructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, causethe one or more processors to perform various ones of, and combinationsof, the operations outlined above with regard to the method illustrativeembodiment.

These and other features and advantages of the present invention will bedescribed in, or will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in theart in view of, the following detailed description of the exampleembodiments of the present invention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The invention, as well as a preferred mode of use and further objectivesand advantages thereof, will best be understood by reference to thefollowing detailed description of illustrative embodiments when read inconjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:

FIG. 1 depicts a schematic diagram of one illustrative embodiment of aquestion/answer creation (QA) system in a computer network;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an example data. processing system in whichaspects of the illustrative embodiments are implemented;

FIG. 3 illustrates a QA system pipeline for processing an input questionin accordance with one illustrative embodiment;

FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating a mechanism for using paraphrasemetrics for answering questions in accordance with an illustrativeembodiment; and

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating operation of a mechanism for usingparaphrase metrics for answering questions in accordance with anillustrative embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The illustrative embodiments provide mechanisms for using paraphrasemetrics for answering questions. Paraphrase metrics are metrics thattake two pieces of text and provide a score that is intended to indicatethe extent to which the two pieces of text are paraphrases of eachother. The illustrative embodiments employ paraphrase metrics for arelated but distinct task answering questions. Specifically, theillustrative embodiments address the task of scoring a passage thatcontains one or more candidate answers to determine whether the passageanswers the question.

Simply applying the metric with the question and the passage as inputsis insufficient for addressing the task of answering questions. Aquestion typically has a focus (what is being asked about) that isexpected to align with a candidate answer, even though the answer itselfwill not be found in a well-formed question. Also, machine translationmetrics are designed with the expectation that the inputs have roughlythe same length and that inputs labeled as “correct” have roughly thesame content.

In contrast, passages that answer a question may also contain additionalinformation. Paraphrase metrics are designed to penalize texts thatprovide additional information, because extra content suggests that twoparaphrases are not equivalent. Furthermore, some questions may haveirrelevant information such as digressions or side comments, andpassages that answer all the important parts of a question may also seemlike poor matches to a paraphrase metric. Therefore, some passages thatare very good for answering a question may seem like relatively poorparaphrases to these metrics. The illustrative embodiments providemechanisms for selecting portions of the question and portions of thepassage to align, applying the paraphrase metrics to those portionsonly, and then combining the results from those metrics to form aconclusion about how well the passage answers the question.

Machine translation metrics are algorithms designed to evaluate theeffectiveness of machine translation systems. Machine translationmetrics take as input pairs of texts consisting of a machine generatedtranslation being evaluated and a translation that is labeled correct orincorrect by a human expert. While these metrics were originallydesigned to evaluate machine translation, the mechanisms of theillustrative embodiments employ these metrics for a different purpose,one that does not involve machine translation or reasoning acrossmultiple languages.

Before beginning the discussion of the various aspects of theillustrative embodiments in more detail, it should first be appreciatedthat throughout this description the term “mechanism” will be used torefer to elements of the present invention that perform variousoperations, functions, and the like. A “mechanism,” as the term is usedherein, may be an implementation of the functions or aspects of theillustrative embodiments in the form of an apparatus, a procedure, or acomputer program product. In the case of a procedure, the procedure isimplemented by one or more devices, apparatus, computers, dataprocessing systems, or the like. In the case of a computer programproduct, the logic represented by computer code or instructions embodiedin or on the computer program product is executed by one or morehardware devices in order to implement the functionality or perform theoperations associated with the specific “mechanism.” Thus, themechanisms described herein may be implemented as specialized hardware,software executing on general purpose hardware, software instructionsstored on a medium such that the instructions are readily executable byspecialized or general purpose hardware, a procedure or method forexecuting the functions, or a combination of any of the above.

The present description and claims may make use of the terms “a”, “atleast one of”, and “one or more of” with regard to particular featuresand elements of the illustrative embodiments. It should be appreciatedthat these terms and phrases are intended to state that there is atleast one of the particular feature or element present in the particularillustrative embodiment, but that more than one can also be present.That is, these terms/phrases are not intended to limit the descriptionor claims to a single feature/element being present or require that aplurality of such features/elements be present. To the contrary, theseterms/phrases only require at least a single feature/element with thepossibility of a plurality of such features/elements being within thescope of the description and claims.

In addition, it should be appreciated that the following descriptionuses a plurality of various examples for various elements of theillustrative embodiments to further illustrate example implementationsof the illustrative embodiments and to aid in the understanding of themechanisms of the illustrative embodiments. These examples intended tobe non-limiting and are not exhaustive of the various possibilities forimplementing the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments. It will beapparent to those of ordinary skill in the art in view of the presentdescription that there are many other alternative implementations forthese various elements that may be utilized in addition to, or inreplacement of, the examples provided herein without departing from thespirit and scope of the present invention.

The illustrative embodiments may be utilized in many different types ofdata processing environments. In order to provide a context for thedescription of the specific elements and functionality of theillustrative embodiments, FIGS. 1-3 are provided hereafter as exampleenvironments in which aspects of the illustrative embodiments may beimplemented. It should be appreciated that FIGS. 1-3 are only examplesand are not intended to assert or imply any limitation with regard tothe environments in which aspects or embodiments of the presentinvention may be implemented. Many modifications to the depictedenvironments may be made without departing from the spirit and scope ofthe present invention.

FIGS. 1-3 are directed to describing an example Question Answering (QA)system (also referred to as a Question/Answer system or Question andAnswer system), methodology, and computer program product with which themechanisms of the illustrative embodiments are implemented. As will hediscussed in greater detail hereafter, the illustrative embodiments areintegrated in, augment, and extend the functionality of these QAmechanisms with regard to using paraphrase metrics for answeringquestions.

Thus, it is important to first have an understanding of how question andanswer creation in a QA system is implemented before describing how themechanisms of the illustrative embodiments are integrated in and augmentsuch Q.A. systems. It should be appreciated that the QA mechanismsdescribed in FIGS. 1-3 are only examples and are not intended to stateor imply any limitation with regard to the type of QA mechanisms withwhich the illustrative embodiments are implemented. Many modificationsto the example QA system shown in FIGS. 1-3 may be implemented invarious embodiments of the present invention without departing from thespirit and scope of the present invention.

As an overview, a Question Answering system (QA system) is an artificialintelligence application executing on data processing hardware thatanswers questions pertaining to a given subject-matter domain presentedin natural language. The QA system receives inputs from various sourcesincluding input over a network, a corpus of electronic documents orother data, data from a content creator, information from one or morecontent users, and other such inputs from other possible sources ofinput. Data storage devices store the corpus of data. A content creatorcreates content in a document for use as part of a corpus of data withthe QA system. The document may include any file, text, article, orsource of data for use in the QA system. For example, a QA systemaccesses a body of knowledge about the domain, or subject matter area,e.g., financial domain, medical domain, legal domain, etc., where thebody of knowledge (knowledgebase) can be organized in a variety ofconfigurations, e.g., a structured repository of domain-specificinformation, such as ontologies, or unstructured data related to thedomain, or a collection of natural language documents about the domain.

Content users input questions to the QA system which then answers theinput questions using the content in the corpus of data by evaluatingdocuments, sections of documents, portions of data in the corpus, or thelike. When a process evaluates a given section of a document forsemantic content, the process can use a variety of conventions to querysuch document from the QA system, e.g., sending the query to the QAsystem as a well-formed question which are then interpreted by the QAsystem and a response is provided containing one or more answers to thequestion. Semantic content is content based on the relation betweensignifiers, such as words, phrases, signs, and symbols, and what, theystand for, their denotation, or connotation. in other words, semanticcontent is content that interprets an expression, such as by usingNatural Language Processing.

As will be described in greater detail hereafter, the QA system receivesan input question, parses the question to extract the major features ofthe question, uses the extracted features to formulate queries, and thenapplies those queries to the corpus of data. Based on the application ofthe queries to the corpus of data, the QA system generates a set ofhypotheses, or candidate answers to the input question, by lookingacross the corpus of data for portions of the corpus of data that havesome potential for containing a valuable response to the input question.The QA system then performs deep analysis on the language of the inputquestion and the language used in each of the portions of the corpus ofdata found during the application of the queries using a variety ofreasoning algorithms. There may be hundreds or even thousands ofreasoning algorithms applied, each of which performs different analysis,e.g., comparisons, natural language analysis, lexical analysis, or thelike, and generates a score. For example, some reasoning algorithms maylook at the matching of terms and synonyms within the language of theinput question and the found portions of the corpus of data. Otherreasoning algorithms may look at temporal or spatial features in thelanguage, while others may evaluate the source of the portion of thecorpus of data and evaluate its veracity.

The scores obtained from the various reasoning algorithms indicate theextent to which the potential response is inferred by the input questionbased on the specific area of focus of that reasoning algorithm. Eachresulting score is then weighted against a statistical model. Thestatistical model captures how well the reasoning algorithm performed atestablishing the inference between two similar passages for a particulardomain during the training period of the QA system. The statisticalmodel is used to summarize a level of confidence that the QA system hasregarding the evidence that the potential response, i.e. candidateanswer, is inferred by the question. This process is repeated for eachof the candidate answers until the QA system identifies candidateanswers that surface as being significantly stronger than others andthus, generates a final answer, or ranked set of answers, for the inputquestion.

As mentioned above, QA systems and mechanisms operate by accessinginformation from a corpus of data or information (also referred to as acorpus of content), analyzing it, and then generating answer resultsbased on the analysis of this data. Accessing information from a corpusof data typically includes: a database query that answers questionsabout what is in a collection of structured records, and a search thatdelivers a collection of document links in response to a query against acollection of unstructured data (text, markup language, etc.),Conventional question answering systems are capable of generatinganswers based on the corpus of data and the input question, verifyinganswers to a collection of questions for the corpus of data, correctingerrors in digital text using a corpus of data, and selecting answers toquestions from a pool of potential answers, i.e. candidate answers.

Content creators, such as article authors, electronic document creators,web page authors, document database creators, and the like, determineuse cases for products, solutions, and services described in suchcontent before writing their content. Consequently, the content creatorsknow what questions the content is intended to answer in a particulartopic addressed by the content. Categorizing the questions, such as interms of roles, type of information, tasks, or the like, associated withthe question, in each document of a corpus of data allows the QA systemto more quickly and efficiently identify documents containing contentrelated to a specific query. The content may also answer other questionsthat the content creator did not contemplate that may be useful tocontent users. The questions and answers may be verified by the contentcreator to be contained in the content for a given document. Thesecapabilities contribute to improved accuracy, system performance,machine learning, and confidence of the QA system. Content creators,automated tools, or the like, annotate or otherwise generate metadatafor providing information useable by the QA system to identify thesequestion and answer attributes of the content.

Operating on such content, the QA system generates answers for inputquestions using a plurality of intensive analysis mechanisms whichevaluate the content to identify the most probable answers, i.e.candidate answers, for the input question. The most probable answers areoutput as a ranked listing of candidate answers ranked according totheir relative scores or confidence measures calculated duringevaluation of the candidate answers, as a single final answer having ahighest ranking score or confidence measure, or which is a best match tothe input question, or a combination of ranked listing and final answer.

FIG. 1 depicts a schematic diagram of one illustrative embodiment of aquestion/answer creation (QA) system 100 in a computer network 102. Oneexample of a question/answer generation which may be used in conjunctionwith the principles described herein is described in U.S. PatentApplication Publication No. 2011/0125734, which is herein incorporatedby reference in its entirety. The QA system 100 is implemented on one ormore computing devices 104 (comprising one or more processors and one ormore memories, and potentially any other computing device elementsgenerally known in the art including buses, storage devices,communication interfaces, and the like) connected to the computernetwork 102. The network 102 includes multiple computing devices 104 incommunication with each other and with other devices or components viaone or more wired and/or wireless data communication links, where eachcommunication link comprises one or more of wires, routers, switches,transmitters, receivers, or the like. The QA system 100 and network 102enables question/answer (QA) generation functionality for one or more QAsystem users via their respective computing devices 110-112. Otherembodiments of the QA system 100 may be used with components, systems,sub-systems, and/or devices other than those that are depicted herein.

The QA system 100 is configured to implement a QA system pipeline 108that receive inputs from various sources. For example, the QA system 100receives input from the network 102, a corpus of electronic documents106, QA system users, and/or other data and other possible sources ofinput. In one embodiment, some or all of the inputs to the QA system 100are routed through the network 102. The various computing devices 104 onthe network 102 include access points for content creators and QA systemusers. Some of the computing devices 104 include devices for a databasestoring the corpus of data 106 (which is shown as a separate entity inFIG. 1 for illustrative purposes only). Portions of the corpus of data106 may also be provided on one or more other network attached storagedevices, in one or more databases, or other computing devices notexplicitly shown in FIG. 1. The network 102 includes local networkconnections and remote connections in various embodiments, such that theQA system 100 may operate in environments of any size, including localand global, e.g., the Internet.

In one embodiment, the content creator creates content in a document ofthe corpus of data 106 for use as part of a corpus of data with the QAsystem 100. The document includes any file, text, article, or source ofdata for use in the QA system 100. QA system users access the QA system100 via a network connection or an Internet connection to the network102, and input questions to the QA system 100 that are answered by thecontent in the corpus of data 106. In one embodiment, the questions areformed using natural language. The QA system 100 parses and interpretsthe question, and provides a response to the Q.A. system user, e.g., QAsystem user 110, containing one or more answers to the question. In someembodiments, the QA system 100 provides a response to users in a rankedlist of candidate answers while in other illustrative embodiments, theQA system 100 provides a single final answer or a combination of a finalanswer and ranked listing of other candidate answers.

The QA system 100 implements a QA system pipeline 108 which comprises aplurality of stages for processing an input question and the corpus ofdata 106. The QA system pipeline 108 generates answers for the inputquestion based on the processing of the input question and the corpus ofdata 106, The Q.A. system pipeline 108 will be described in greaterdetail hereafter with regard to FIG. 3.

In some illustrative embodiments, the QA system 100 may be the IBMWatson™ QA system available from International Business MachinesCorporation of Armonk, N.Y., which is augmented with the mechanisms ofthe illustrative embodiments described hereafter. As outlinedpreviously, the IBM Watson™ QA system receives an input question whichit then parses to extract, the major features of the question, that inturn are then used to formulate queries that are applied to the corpusof data. Based on the application of the queries to the corpus of data,a set of hypotheses, or candidate answers to the input question, aregenerated by looking across the corpus of data for portions of thecorpus of data that have some potential for containing a valuableresponse to the input question. The IBM Watson™ QA system then performsdeep analysis on the language of the input question and the languageused in each of the portions of the corpus of data found during theapplication of the queries using a variety of reasoning algorithms, Thescores obtained from the various reasoning algorithms are then weightedagainst a statistical model that summarizes a level of confidence thatthe IBM Watson™ QA system has regarding the evidence that the potentialresponse, i.e. candidate answer, is inferred by the question. Thisprocess is be repeated for each of the candidate answers to generateranked listing of candidate answers which may then be presented to theuser that submitted the input question, or from which a final answer isselected and presented to the user. More information about the IBMWatson™ QA system may be obtained, for example, from the IBM Corporationwebsite, IBM Redbooks, and the like. For example, information about theIBM Watson™ QA system can be found in Yuan et al., “Watson andHealthcare,” IBM developer Works, 2011 and “The Era of CognitiveSystems: An Inside Look at IBM Watson and How it Works” by Rob High, IBMRedbooks, 2012.

In accordance with an illustrative embodiment, QA system 100 includes amechanism within QA system pipeline 108 that attempts to determinewhether a given passage answers a question by determining whether somepart of the passage is a paraphrase of the important parts of thequestion. The mechanism takes as input a question, a passage, and acandidate answer to the question, plus natural language processinganalysis of each (e.g., a syntactic parse of the question and thepassage). The mechanism divides the question and the passage intosequences of tokens. The mechanism then matches question tokens topassage tokens, including matching the focus of the question to anyoccurrence of the candidate answer in the passage. The mechanism uses aset of heuristics that depend on the matching information and/or thenatural language processing analysis to identify useful subsequences ofthe passage tokens. The mechanism applies a paraphrase metric to comparethe question tokens to each identified subsequence of the passagetokens. The mechanism asserts the best paraphrase metric score as anindicator of whether the passage contains a correct answer to thequestion.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an example data processing system in whichaspects of the illustrative embodiments are implemented. Data processingsystem 200 is an example of a computer, such as server 104 or client 110in FIG. 1, in which computer usable code or instructions implementingthe processes for illustrative embodiments of the present invention arelocated. In one illustrative embodiment, FIG. 2 represents a servercomputing device, such as a server 104, which, which implements a QAsystem 100 and QA system pipeline 108 augmented to include theadditional mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments describedhereafter.

In the depicted example, data processing system 200 employs a hubarchitecture including north bridge and memory controller hub (NB/MCH)202 and south bridge and input/output (I/O) controller hub (SB/ICH) 204.Processing unit 206, main memory 208, and graphics processor 210 areconnected to NB/MCH 202. Graphics processor 210 is connected to NB/MCH202 through an accelerated graphics port (AGP).

In the depicted example, local area network (LAN) adapter 212 connectsto SB/ICH 204. Audio adapter 216, keyboard and mouse adapter 220, modem222, read only memory (ROM) 224, hard disk drive (HDD) 226, CD-ROM drive230, universal serial bus (USB) ports and other communication ports 232,and PCI/PCIe devices 234 connect to SB/ICH 204 through bus 238 and bus240. PCI/PCIe devices may include, for example, Ethernet adapters,add-in cards, and PC cards for notebook computers. uses a card buscontroller, while PCIe does not. ROM 224 may be, for example, a flashbasic input/output system (BIOS).

HDD 226 and CD-ROM drive 230 connect to SB/ICH 204 through bus 240, HDD226 and CD-ROM drive 230 may use, for example, an integrated driveelectronics (IDE) or serial advanced technology attachment (SATA)interface. Super I/O (SIO) device 236 is connected to SB/ICH 204.

An operating system runs on processing unit 206. The operating systemcoordinates and provides control of various components within the dataprocessing system 200 in FIG. 2. As a client, the operating system is acommercially available operating system such as Microsoft® Windows 8®.An object-oriented programming system, such as the Java™ programmingsystem, may run in conjunction with the operating system and providescalls to the operating system from Java™ programs or applicationsexecuting on data processing system 200.

As a server, data processing system 200 may be, for example, an IBM®eServer™ System p® computer system, running the Advanced InteractiveExecutive (AIX®) operating system or the LINUX® operating system. Dataprocessing system 200 may be a symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) systemincluding a plurality of processors in processing unit 206.Alternatively, a single processor system may be employed.

Instructions for the operating system, the object-oriented programmingsystem, and applications or programs are located on storage devices,such as HDD 226, and are loaded into main memory 208 for execution byprocessing unit 206. The processes for illustrative embodiments of thepresent invention are performed by processing unit 206 using computerusable program code, which is located in a memory such as, for example,main memory 208, ROM 224, or in one or more peripheral devices 226 and230, for example.

A bus system, such as bus 238 or bus 240 as shown in FIG. 2, iscomprised of one or more buses. Of course, the bus system may beimplemented using any type of communication fabric or architecture thatprovides for a transfer of data between different components or devicesattached to the fabric or architecture. A communication unit, such asmodem 222 or network adapter 212 of FIG. 2, includes one or more devicesused to transmit and receive data. A memory may be, for example, mainmemory 208, ROM 224, or a cache such as found in NB/MCH 202 in FIG. 2.

Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the hardwaredepicted in FIGS. 1 and 2 may vary depending on the implementation.Other internal hardware or peripheral devices, such as flash memory,equivalent non-volatile memory, or optical disk drives and the like, maybe used in addition to or in place of the hardware depicted in FIGS. 1and 2. Also, the processes of the illustrative embodiments may beapplied to a multiprocessor data processing system, other than the SMPsystem mentioned previously, without departing from the spirit and scopeof the present invention.

Moreover, the data processing system 200 may take the form of any of anumber of different data processing systems including client computingdevices, server computing devices, a tablet computer, laptop computer,telephone or other communication device, a personal digital assistant(PDA), or the like. In some illustrative examples, data processingsystem 200 may be a portable computing device that is configured withflash memory to provide non-volatile memory for storing operating systemfiles and/or user-generated data, for example. Essentially, dataprocessing system 200 may be any known or later developed dataprocessing system without architectural limitation.

FIG. 3 illustrates a QA system pipeline for processing an input questionin accordance with one illustrative embodiment. The QA system pipelineof FIG. 3 may be implemented, for example, as QA system pipeline 108 ofQA system 100 in FIG. 1. It should be appreciated that the stages of theQA system pipeline shown in FIG. 3 are implemented as one or moresoftware engines, components, or the like, which are configured withlogic for implementing the functionality attributed to the particularstage. Each stage is implemented using one or more of such softwareengines, components or the like. The software engines, components, etc.are executed on one or more processors of one or more data processingsystems or devices and utilize or operate on data stored in one or moredata storage devices, memories, or the like, on one or more of the dataprocessing systems. The QA system pipeline of FIG. 3 is augmented, forexample, in one or more of the stages to implement the improvedmechanism of the illustrative embodiments described hereafter,additional stages may be provided to implement the improved mechanism,or separate logic from the pipeline 300 may be provided for interfacingwith the pipeline 300 and implementing the improved functionality andoperations of the illustrative embodiments.

As shown in FIG. 3, the QA system pipeline 300 comprises a plurality ofstages 310-380 through which the QA system operates to analyze an inputquestion and generate a final response. In an initial question inputstage 310, the QA system receives an input question that is presented ina natural language format. That is, a user inputs, via a user interface,an input question for which the user wishes to obtain an answer, e.g.,“Who are Washington's closest advisors?” In response to receiving theinput question, the next stage of the QA system pipeline 300, i.e. thequestion and topic analysis stage 320, parses the input question usingnatural language processing (NLP) techniques to extract major featuresfrom the input question, and classify the major features according totypes, e.g., names, dates, or any of a plethora of other defined topics.For example, in the example question above, the term “who” may beassociated with a topic for “persons” indicating that the identity of aperson is being sought, “Washington” may be identified as a proper nameof a person with which the question is associated, “closest” may beidentified as a word indicative of proximity or relationship, and“advisors” may be indicative of a noun or other language topic.

In addition, the extracted major features include key words and phrasesclassified into question characteristics, such as the focus of thequestion, the lexical answer type (LAT) of the question, and the like.As referred to herein, a lexical answer type (LAT) is a word in, or aword inferred from, the input question that indicates the type of theanswer, independent of assigning semantics to that word. For example, inthe question “What maneuver was invented in the 1500s to speed up thegame and involves two pieces of the same color?,” the LAT is the string“maneuver.” The focus of a question is the part of the question that, ifreplaced by the answer, makes the question a standalone statement. Forexample, in the question “What drug has been shown to relieve thesymptoms of ADD with relatively few side effects?,” the focus is “ drug”since if this word were replaced with the answer, e.g., the answer“Adderall” can be used to replace the term “drug” to generate thesentence “Adderall has been shown to relieve the symptoms of ADD withrelatively few side effects.” The focus often, but not always, containsthe LAT. On the other hand, in many cases it is not possible to infer ameaningful LAT from the focus.

Referring again to FIG. 3, the identified major features are then usedduring the question decomposition stage 330 to decompose the questioninto one or more queries that are applied to the corpora ofdata/information 345 in order to generate one or more hypotheses. Thequeries are generated in any known or later developed query language,such as the Structure Query Language (SQL), or the like. The queries areapplied to one or more databases storing information about theelectronic texts, documents, articles, websites, and the like, that makeup the corpora of data/information 345. That is, these various sourcesthemselves, different collections of sources, and the like, represent adifferent corpus 347 within the corpora 345. There may be differentcorpora 347 defined for different collections of documents based onvarious criteria depending upon the particular implementation. Forexample, different corpora may be established for different topics,subject matter categories, sources of information, or the like. As oneexample, a first corpus may be associated with healthcare documentswhile a second corpus may be associated with financial documents.Alternatively, one corpus may be documents published by the U.S.Department of Energy while another corpus may be IBM Redbooks documents.Any collection of content having some similar attribute may beconsidered to be a corpus 347 within the corpora 345.

The queries are applied to one or more databases storing informationabout the electronic texts, documents, articles, websites, and the like,that make up the corpus of data/information, e.g., the corpus of data106 in FIG. 1. The queries are applied to the corpus of data/informationat the hypothesis generation stage 340 to generate results identifyingpotential hypotheses for answering the input question, which can then beevaluated. That is, the application of the queries results in theextraction of portions of the corpus of data/information matching thecriteria of the particular query. These portions of the corpus are thenanalyzed and used, during the hypothesis generation stage 340, togenerate hypotheses for answering the input question. These hypothesesare also referred to herein as “candidate answers” for the inputquestion. For any input question, at this stage 340, there may behundreds of hypotheses or candidate answers generated that may need tobe evaluated.

The QA system pipeline 300, in stage 350, then performs a deep analysisand comparison of the language of the input question and the language ofeach hypothesis or “candidate answer,” as well as performs evidencescoring to evaluate the likelihood that the particular hypothesis is acorrect answer for the input question. As mentioned above, this involvesusing a plurality of reasoning algorithms, each performing a separatetype of analysis of the language of the input question and/or content ofthe corpus that provides evidence in support of, or not in support of,the hypothesis. Each reasoning algorithm generates a score based on theanalysis it performs which indicates a measure of relevance of theindividual portions of the corpus of data/information extracted byapplication of the queries as well as a measure of the correctness ofthe corresponding hypothesis, i.e. a measure of confidence in thehypothesis. There are various ways of generating such scores dependingupon the particular analysis being performed. In generally, however,these algorithms look for particular terms, phrases, or patterns of textthat are indicative of terms, phrases, or patterns of interest anddetermine a degree of matching with higher degrees of matching beinggiven relatively higher scores than lower degrees of matching.

Thus, for example, an algorithm may be configured to look for the exactterm from an input question or synonyms to that term in the inputquestion, e.g., the exact term or synonyms for the term “movie,” andgenerate a score based on a frequency of use of these exact terms orsynonyms. In such a case, exact matches will be given the highestscores, while synonyms may be given lower scores based on a relativeranking of the synonyms as may be specified by a subject matter expert(person with knowledge of the particular domain and terminology used) orautomatically determined from frequency of use of the synonym in thecorpus corresponding to the domain. Thus, for example, an exact match ofthe term “movie” in content of the corpus (also referred to as evidence,or evidence passages) is given a highest score. A synonym of movie, suchas “motion picture” may he given a lower score but still higher than asynonym of the type “film” or “moving picture show.” Instances of theexact matches and synonyms for each evidence passage may be compiled andused in a quantitative function to generate a score for the degree ofmatching of the evidence passage to the input question.

Thus, for example, a hypothesis or candidate answer to the inputquestion of “What was the first movie?” is “The Horse in Motion.” If theevidence passage contains the statements “The first motion picture evermade was ‘The Horse in Motion’ in 1878 by Eadweard Muybridge. It was amovie of a horse running,” and the algorithm is looking for exactmatches or synonyms to the focus of the input question, i.e. “movie,”then an exact match of “movie” is found in the second sentence of theevidence passage and a highly scored synonym to “movie,” i.e. “motionpicture,” is found in the first sentence of the evidence passage. Thismay be combined with further analysis of the evidence passage toidentify that the text of the candidate answer is present in theevidence passage as well, i.e. “The Horse in Motion,” These factors maybe combined to give this evidence passage a relatively high score assupporting evidence for the candidate answer “The Horse in Motion” beinga correct answer.

It should be appreciated that this is just one simple example of howscoring can be performed. Many other algorithms of various complexitymay be used to generate scores for candidate answers and evidencewithout departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention.

in the synthesis stage 360, the large number of scores generated by thevarious reasoning algorithms are synthesized into confidence scores orconfidence measures for the various hypotheses. This process involvesapplying weights to the various scores. Where the weights have beendetermined through training of the statistical model employed by the QAsystem and/or dynamically updated. For example, the weights for scoresgenerated by algorithms that identify exactly matching terms and synonymmay be set relatively higher than other algorithms that are evaluatingpublication dates for evidence passages. The weights themselves may bespecified by subject matter experts or learned through machine learningprocesses that evaluate the significance of characteristics evidencepassages and their relative importance to overall candidate answergeneration.

The weighted scores are processed in accordance with a statistical modelgenerated through training of the QA system that identifies a manner bywhich these scores may be combined to generate a confidence score ormeasure for the individual hypotheses or candidate answers. Thisconfidence score or measure summarizes the level of confidence that theQA system has about the evidence that the candidate answer is inferredby the input question, i.e. that the candidate answer is the correctanswer for the input question.

The resulting confidence scores or measures are processed by a finalconfidence merging and ranking stage 370 which compares the confidencescores and measures to each other, compares them against predeterminedthresholds, or performs any other analysis on the confidence scores todetermine which hypotheses/candidate answers are the most likely to bethe correct answer to the input question. The hypotheses/candidateanswers are ranked according to these comparisons to generate a rankedlisting of hypotheses/candidate answers (hereafter simply referred to as“candidate answers”). From the ranked listing of candidate answers, atstage 380, a final answer and confidence score, or final set ofcandidate answers and confidence scores, are generated and output to thesubmitter of the original input question via a graphical user interfaceor other mechanism for outputting information.

In accordance with an illustrative embodiment, in stages 340, 350, amechanism divides the question and passage into sequences of tokens andmatches the question tokens to the passage tokens. The mechanism appliesa paraphrase metric to compare the question tokens to the sequence ofpassage tokens and asserts the best resulting paraphrase metric score asan indicator of whether the passage contains a correct answer to thequestion.

The paraphrase metric may be a machine translation metric, because somemachine translation metrics have been shown to be effective paraphrasemetrics.

The illustrative embodiments may run the entire pipeline 300 repeatedlywith different paraphrase metrics to produce different outputs. In oneembodiment, pipeline 300 is run repeatedly with different paraphrasemetrics to produce different outputs on a set of annotated sample data,and then those metrics that are not effective on that sample data can bediscarded and not used in the deployed system.

In one example embodiment, the mechanism also finds a subsequence of thequestion tokens that includes all of the important question content. Themechanism then uses the subsequence of question tokens instead of theoriginal question tokens for application of the paraphrase metric.

In one embodiment, the mechanism uses a set of heuristics that depend onthe matching information and/or the natural language processing analysisto identify useful subsequences of passage tokens. In one exampleembodiment, the mechanism restricts the sequence of passage tokens toonly contiguous sequences. For example, given the input “A B C D,” thesubsequence “B C” is a contiguous subsequence, but “B D” is anon-contiguous subsequence. Alternatively, the mechanism may alloweither contiguous or non-contiguous subsequences.

Final confidence merging and ranking phase 370 then determines finalcandidate answer confidence scores based on paraphrase metric scores.The paraphrase metric is just one factor among many that would determinea final confidence score.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating a mechanism for using paraphrasemetrics for answering questions in accordance with an illustrativeembodiment. Hypotheses generation phase 440 receives question 410. Asstated above with reference to FIG. 3, each phase of the QA systempipeline comprises combinations of reasoning algorithms for performinganalysis, annotation, and/or natural language processing on portions andfeatures of question text and passages from the corpus.

In accordance with the illustrative embodiment, given a question,hypothesis generation phase 440 generates a candidate answer containedwithin a supporting passage. Hypothesis generation phase 440 passes thequestion, candidate answer, and supporting passage 441 to component 442,which divides the question into question tokens 443 and divides thepassage into subsequences of passage tokens 444, as described above.

Paraphrase metric scoring component 445 produces a score for how wellcontent in the passage aligns with the question. Paraphrase metricscoring component 445 may comprise one or more reasoning algorithmswithin QA system pipeline 300 in FIG. 3, for example, or morespecifically, within hypothesis generation stage 440, hypothesis andevidence scoring phase 450, or a combination of stages 440 and 450.Paraphrase metric scoring component 445 matches question tokens 443 tothe subsequences of passage tokens 444 to attempt to match the focus ofthe question with occurrence of the candidate answer in the passage.Paraphrase metric scoring component 445 may implement any of thefollowing methods for aligning the focus of the question with thecandidate answer in the passage:

1. Modify the implementation of the paraphrase metric to treat the focusof the question as a match for the candidate answer in the passage.

2. Modify the question, replacing the text of the focus of the questionwith the text of the candidate answer.

3. Modify the passage, replacing the text of the candidate answer withthe text of the focus of the question.

4. Modify both the question and the passage, replacing the text of thefocus of the question and the candidate answer with a common reservedconstant string.

After applying one of the above methods, paraphrase metric scoringcomponent 445 identifies one or more portions or subsequences 444 of thepassage to compare to the question, apply the metric to compare thequestion to each portion of the passage, and then compute a final score,which is the best score across all portions. The basic algorithm foridentifying portions of the passage is to divide the passage into tokensand take all token subsequences. For example, given the passage “A B C,”paraphrase metric scoring component. 445 would find subsequences “A,” “AB,” “A B C,” “B,” “B C,” and “C.”

However, for a long passage, the number of subsequences is very large.Paraphrase metric scoring component 445 may restrict the computation touse a subset of all subsequences. To that end, paraphrase metric scoringcomponent 445 may employ the following restrictions on subsequences toconsider:

1. The number of tokens in the subsequence must be within K of thenumber of tokens in the question, for some constant K.

2. The subsequence must contain at least N tokens that match tokens inthe question.

3. The subsequence must contain at least N n-stop-word tokens that matchtokens in the question.

4. The subsequence must contain the candidate answer.

5. The subsequence may not contain a sentence boundary.

6. The subsequence must begin at a sentence boundary.

7. The subsequence must end at a sentence boundary.

8. The subsequence must begin at a clause boundary.

9. The subsequence must end at a clause boundary.

10. The subsequence must be contiguous.

11. The subsequence must include no more than C contiguoussub-subsequences.

In addition, paraphrase metric scoring component 445 can considervarious logical combinations of restrictions above. For example,(restriction #1 OR (restriction #4 AND restriction #5)) indicates thatthe subsequence must be within K tokens of the question in length orbegins and ends at a sentence boundary. Given the set of allsubsequences that meet the restrictions, paraphrase metric scoringcomponent 445 applies the paraphrase metric to compare the question toeach of the subsequences and report the best result.

Consider an example question of “What is the center of the solarsystem?” with a candidate answer of “Sun.” A possible justifying passageis as follows: “The solar system consists of the Sun, at its center,plus eight planets, their moons, and many other objects. Most of themass of the solar system is in the Sun. Jupiter also has a substantialamount of mass.” If the mechanism identifies tokens by saying that alltext separated by white space is a token (a common practice), then thequestion has eleven tokens. For this example, the mechanism employs thefollowing combination of restrictions:

((restriction #1 with K=0) OR (restriction #6 AND restriction #7)) AND(restriction #3 with N=2) AND (restriction #4 AND restriction #10).

Given the above restrictions, the following are examples of validsubsequences to consider:

“The solar system consists of the Sun, at its center, plus” is validbecause it has eleven tokens, has four non-stop-word token matches,including the focus matches the candidate answer, contains “Sun,” and isa contiguous subsequence of the passage.

“solar system consists of the Sun, at its center, plus eight” is validbecause it has eleven tokens, has four non-stop-word token matches,including the focus matches the candidate answer, contains “Sun,” and isa contiguous subsequence of the passage.

“Most of the mass of the solar system is in the Sun” is valid because itbegins and ends at a sentence boundary, has three non-stop-word tokenmatches, including the focus matches the candidate answer, contains“Sun,” and is a contiguous subsequence of the passage.

The following are not subsequences that are not considered under theabove restrictions:

“The solar system consists of the Sun, at its center” is not validbecause it has fewer than eleven tokens and does not end at a sentenceboundary,

“Jupiter also has a substantial amount of mass” is not valid because itdoes not contain the candidate answer and because it does not have therequired number of non-stop-word token matches.

Hypothesis and evidence scoring stage 450 then provides the candidateanswer, passage, and paraphrase metric score 455 to final confidencemerging and ranking stage 470. Given a plurality of candidate answerswith associated paraphrase metric scores, as well as other usefulinformation from other stages or other reasoning algorithms, finalconfidence merging and ranking stage 470 then generates and provides oneor more candidate answers 480 for answering question 410.

The present invention may be a system, a method, and/or a computerprogram product. The computer program product may include a computerreadable storage medium (or media) having computer readable programinstructions thereon for causing a processor to carry out aspects of thepresent invention.

The computer readable storage medium can be a tangible device that canretain and store instructions for use by an instruction executiondevice. The computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but isnot limited to, an electronic storage device, a magnetic storage device,an optical storage device, an electromagnetic storage device, asemiconductor storage device, or any suitable combination of theforegoing. A non-exhaustive list of more specific examples of thecomputer readable storage medium includes the following: a portablecomputer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), aread-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROMor Flash memory), a static random access memory (SRAM), a portablecompact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), a digital versatile disk (DVD),a memory stick, a floppy disk, a mechanically encoded device such aspunch-cards or raised structures in a groove having instructionsrecorded thereon, and any suitable combination of the foregoing. Acomputer readable storage medium, as used herein, is not to be construedas being transitory signals per se, such as radio waves or other freelypropagating electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic waves propagatingthrough a waveguide or other transmission media (e.g., light pulsespassing through a fiber-optic cable), or electrical signals transmittedthrough a wire.

Computer readable program instructions described herein can bedownloaded to respective computing/processing devices from a computerreadable storage medium or to an external computer or external storagedevice via a network, for example, the Internet, a local area network, awide area network and/or a wireless network. The network may comprisecopper transmission cables, optical transmission fibers, wirelesstransmission, routers, firework, switches, gateway computers and/or edgeservers. A network adapter card or network interface in eachcomputing/processing device receives computer readable programinstructions from the network and forwards the computer readable programinstructions for storage in a computer readable storage medium withinthe respective computing/processing device.

Computer readable program instructions for carrying out operations ofthe present invention may be assembler instructions,instruction-set-architecture (ISA) instructions, machine instructions,machine dependent instructions, microcode, firmware instructions,state-setting data, or either source code or object code written in anycombination of one or more programming languages, including an objectoriented programming language such as Java, Smalltalk, C++ or the like,and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C”programming language or similar programming languages. The computerreadable program instructions may execute entirely on the user'scomputer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone softwarepackage, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computeror entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario,the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through anytype of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide areanetwork (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer(for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider).In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including, for example,programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), orprogrammable logic arrays (PLA) may execute the computer readableprogram instructions by utilizing state information of the computerreadable program instructions to personalize the electronic circuitry,in order to perform aspects of the present invention.

Aspects of the present invention are described herein with reference toflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus(systems), and computer program products according to embodiments of theinvention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchartillustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in theflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented bycomputer readable program instructions.

These computer readable program instructions may be provided to aprocessor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, orother programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, suchthat the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computeror other programmable data processing apparatus, create means forimplementing the functions acts specified in the flowchart and/or blockdiagram block or blocks. These computer readable program instructionsmay also be stored in a computer readable storage medium that can directa computer, a programmable data processing apparatus, and/or otherdevices to function in a particular manner, such that the computerreadable storage medium having instructions stored therein comprises anarticle of manufacture including instructions which implement aspects ofthe function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram blockor blocks.

The computer readable program instructions may also be loaded onto acomputer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other deviceto cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer,other programmable apparatus or other device to produce a computerimplemented process, such that the instructions which execute on thecomputer, other programmable apparatus, or other device implement thefunctions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block orblocks.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating operation of a mechanism for usingparaphrase metrics for answering questions in accordance with anillustrative embodiment. Operation begins (block 500), and the mechanismreceives a question (block 501). The mechanism generates a candidateanswer for the question based on a supporting passage from a corpus ofdocuments (block 502). The mechanism performs natural languageprocessing and/or parsing of the question and the supporting passage(block 503).

The mechanism then divides the question and the passage into sequencesof tokens (block 504) and matches question tokens to passage tokens(block 505). The mechanism uses heuristics that depend on the matchinginformation and/or natural language processing analysis to identifyuseful subsequences of passage tokens (block 506). The mechanism thenapplies a paraphrase metric to compare the question tokens to eachidentified subsequence of passage tokens (block 507). Next, themechanism asserts the best paraphrase metric score as an indicator ofwhether the passage contains a candidate answer that is a correct answerto the question (block 508). Thereafter, operation ends (block 509).

The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate thearchitecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementationsof systems, methods, and computer program products according to variousembodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in theflowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portionof instructions, which comprises one or more executable instructions forimplementing the specified logical function(s). In some alternativeimplementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of theorder noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in successionmay, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks maysometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon thefunctionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of theblock diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocksin the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implementedby special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specifiedfunctions or acts or carry out combinations of special purpose hardwareand computer instructions.

As noted above, it should be appreciated that the illustrativeembodiments may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, anentirely software embodiment or an embodiment containing both hardwareand software elements. In one example embodiment, the mechanisms of theillustrative embodiments are implemented in software or program code,which includes but is not limited to firmware, resident software,microcode, etc.

A data processing system suitable fir storing and/or executing programcode will include at least one processor coupled directly or indirectlyto memory elements through a system bus. The memory elements can includelocal memory employed during actual execution of the program code, bulkstorage, and cache memories which provide temporary storage of at leastsome program code in order to reduce the number of times code must beretrieved from bulk storage during execution.

Input/output or I/O devices (including but not limited to keyboards,displays, pointing devices, etc.) can be coupled to the system eitherdirectly or through intervening I/O controllers. Network adapters mayalso be coupled to the system to enable the data processing system tobecome coupled to other data processing systems or remote printers orstorage devices through intervening private or public networks. Modems,cable modems and Ethernet cards are just a few of the currentlyavailable types of network adapters.

The description of the present invention has been presented for purposesof illustration and description, and is not intended to be exhaustive orlimited to the invention in the form disclosed. Many modifications andvariations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the artwithout departing from the scope and spirit of the describedembodiments. The embodiment was chosen and described in order to bestexplain the principles of the invention, the practical application, andto enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand theinvention for various embodiments with various modifications as aresuited to the particular use contemplated. The terminology used hereinwas chosen to best explain the principles of the embodiments, thepractical application or technical improvement over technologies foundin the marketplace, or to enable others of ordinary skill in the art tounderstand the embodiments disclosed herein.

1. A method, in a data processing system, for using paraphrase metricsfor answering questions, the method comprising: receiving an inputquestion; generating a candidate answer from a corpus of information,wherein the candidate answer has a supporting passage from the corpus ofinformation; dividing the input question into a first sequence oftokens; dividing the supporting passage into a second sequence oftokens; identifying a plurality of subsequences of tokens within thesecond sequence of tokens; applying a paraphrase metric to compare thefirst sequence of tokens to each of the plurality of subsequences oftokens to generate a plurality of paraphrase metric scores; anddetermining a confidence score for the candidate answer based on ahighest paraphrase metric score within the plurality of paraphrasemetric scores.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the paraphrase metricis a machine translation metric.
 3. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising; applying a plurality of paraphrase metrics to produce aplurality of results; and eliminating a given paraphrase metric that isdetermined to be ineffective based on the plurality of results fromfuture application.
 4. (canceled)
 5. The method of claim 1, whereindividing the input question into the first sequence of tokens comprises:dividing the input question into a plurality of sequences of questiontokens; identifying a given sequence of question tokens within theplurality of sequences of question tokens having important content ofthe input question as the first sequence of tokens,
 6. The method ofclaim 1, further comprising: matching question tokens from the first setof tokens to passage tokens from the second set of tokens.
 7. The methodof claim 6, wherein matching the question tokens to the passage tokenscomprises: identifying a focus of the input question; and matching thefocus of the input question to an occurrence of the candidate answer inthe supporting passage.
 8. (canceled)
 9. The method of claim 1, whereinidentifying the plurality of subsequences of tokens within the secondsequence of tokens comprises restricting the plurality of subsequencesof tokens such that: a number of tokens in each subsequence of tokensmust be within a first predetermined number of a number of tokens in thefirst sequence of tokens; each subsequence must contain at least asecond predetermined number of tokens that match tokens in the firstsequence of tokens; each subsequence must contain at least a thirdpredetermined number of non-stop-word tokens that match tokens in thefirst sequence of tokens; each subsequence must contain the candidateanswer; each subsequence may not contain a sentence boundary; eachsubsequence must begin at a sentence boundary; each subsequence must endat a sentence boundary; each subsequence must begin at a clauseboundary; each subsequence must end at a clause boundary; eachsubsequence must be contiguous; or each subsequence must include no morethan a fourth predetermined number of contiguous sub-subsequences.
 10. Acomputer program product comprising a computer readable storage mediumhaving a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computerreadable program, when executed on a computing device, causes thecomputing device to: receive an input question; generate a candidateanswer from a corpus of information, wherein the candidate answer has asupporting passage from the corpus of information; divide the inputquestion into a first sequence of tokens; divide the supporting passageinto a second sequence of tokens; identify a plurality of subsequencesof tokens within the second sequence of tokens; apply a paraphrasemetric to compare the first sequence of tokens to each of the pluralityof subsequences of tokens to generate a plurality of paraphrase metricscores; and determine a confidence score for the candidate answer basedon a highest paraphrase metric score within the plurality of paraphrasemetric scores.
 11. The computer program product of claim 10, whereindividing the input question into the first sequence of tokens comprises:dividing the input question into a plurality of sequences of questiontokens; identifying a given sequence of question tokens within theplurality of sequences of question tokens having important content ofthe input question as the first sequence of tokens.
 12. The computerprogram product of claim 10, wherein the computer readable programfurther causes the computing device to match question tokens from thefirst set of tokens to passage tokens from the second set of tokens. 13.The computer program product of claim 12, wherein matching the questiontokens to the passage tokens comprises: identifying a focus of the inputquestion; and matching the focus of the input question to an occurrenceof the candidate answer in the supporting passage.
 14. (canceled) 15.The computer program product of claim 10, wherein identifying theplurality of subsequences of tokens within the second sequence of tokenscomprises restricting the plurality of subsequences of tokens such that:a number of tokens in each subsequence of tokens must be within a firstpredetermined number of a number of tokens in the first sequence oftokens; each subsequence must contain at least a second predeterminednumber of tokens that match tokens in the first sequence of tokens; eachsubsequence must contain at least a third, predetermined number ofnon-stop-word tokens that match tokens in the first sequence of tokens;each subsequence must contain the candidate answer; each subsequence maynot contain a sentence boundary; each subsequence must begin at asentence boundary; each subsequence must end at a sentence boundary:each subsequence must begin at a clause boundary; each subsequence mustend at a clause boundary; each subsequence must be contiguous; or eachsubsequence must include no more than a fourth predetermined number ofcontiguous sub-subsequences.
 16. An apparatus comprising: a processor;and a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprisesinstructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processorto: receive an input question; generate a candidate answer from a corpusof information, wherein the candidate answer has a supporting passagefrom the corpus of information; divide the input question into a firstsequence of tokens; divide the supporting passage into a second sequenceof tokens; identify a plurality of subsequences of tokens within thesecond sequence of tokens; apply a paraphrase metric to compare thefirst sequence of tokens to each of the plurality of subsequences oftokens to generate a plurality of paraphrase metric scores; anddetermine a confidence score for the candidate answer based on a highestparaphrase metric score within the plurality of paraphrase metricscores.
 17. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein dividing the inputquestion into the first sequence of tokens comprises: dividing the inputquestion into a plurality of sequences of question tokens; identifying agiven sequence of question tokens within the plurality of sequences ofquestion tokens having important content of the input question as thefirst sequence of tokens.
 18. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein theinstructions further cause the processor to match question tokens fromthe first set of tokens to passage tokens from the second set of tokens.19. The apparatus of claim 18, wherein matching the question tokens tothe passage tokens comprises: identifying a focus of the input question;and matching the focus of the input question to an occurrence of thecandidate answer in the supporting passage.
 20. (canceled)
 21. Thecomputer program product of claim 10, wherein the paraphrase metric is amachine translation metric.
 22. The computer program product of claim10, wherein the computer readable program further causes the computingdevice to: apply a plurality of paraphrase metrics to produce aplurality of results; and eliminate a given paraphrase metric that isdetermined to be ineffective based on the plurality of results fromfuture application.
 23. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein theparaphrase metric is a machine translation metric.
 24. The apparatus ofclaim 16, wherein the instructions further cause the processor to:applying a plurality of paraphrase metrics to produce a plurality ofresults; and eliminating a given paraphrase metric that is determined tobe ineffective based on the plurality of results from futureapplication.